At fifteen, Justin is already a cynic. He’s experienced too
many betrayals, too many disappointments. He doesn’t want to be involved in
anything. He doesn’t want to be popular. He doesn’t even want friends anymore,
since they only ever let you down. He just wants to get through high school and
the best way he can come up with to accomplish that goal is to simply be
invisible.

His self-imposed exile from high school life is threatened
when Liam, the scary stoner, reaches out to him. What starts out as a strange
and unsettling encounter with the unnerving,
pot-smoking teenager evolves into the sort of friendship that changes
the course of a person’s life.

But as Liam drags the reluctant Justin out of his shell,
Liam’s own secret is revealed.

Fearless is the
story of the myriad shades of love, how to find one’s courage and the
transformative power of friendship.

Now, Fearless is obviously LGBT fiction. I know a lot of heterosexual friends who read and enjoy LGBT literature, but I know just as many who are afraid to give it a try. Take a look at Chris's guest post to see what he's got to say on the matter...

I'm hetero, why should I read LGBT Fiction?

This is a wonderful question. There is so much out there to
read and enjoy, why should a person read about a group of people in society
that they don’t identify with? This question also can be rephrased as, “I’m
white, why should I read a book about the experience of a person of color?” Or,
“I’m a man, why should I write a book about life as a woman?”

Books serve all sorts of purposes—to entertain, to educate,
to excite our imaginations, to help us escape our day-to-day lives. At their
core, though, what books really have is the power to do is to let us see the
world through someone else’s eyes.

The very first book that I absolutely loved was The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. I was
just a kid when I read it, living my middle-class life and vey sure that
everyone around me was exactly who they appeared to be. The Outsiders opened my eyes and suddenly I saw that people with
their mohawks and leather jackets and long hair were all just people, not much
different from me. By reading about people whose lives were vastly different
from my own, I learned an invaluable life lesson, and one that carries through
all the way to Fearless.

Of course, there’s a whole political tangent I can go off
on, but we’d be here for days if I got started. I’d rather focus on why one
would invest time and money in LGBT fiction. And the reason is because by
reading stories about the queer experience, you will learn that we’re not all
that different after all. We want love, we need comfort, we seek acceptance.

What I tried to accomplish with Fearless was to bridge that gap. I like to say I wrote a story that
had a gay character but it wasn’t about being gay. The main character, Justin,
was facing off with a number of problems at the beginning of the book. His
being gay informed his experience, but it didn’t define him. The themes of
friendship and courage that I wove into the story are universal, I think.

A lot of gay and transgender fiction is written by gay and
transgender men and women, so when you are reading these stories, you are
getting a glimpse into their lives. The stories may be fiction, but you can bet
the experiences of the characters reflect something the author themselves went
through.

So why should you read LGBT books if you’re straight? Because
it helps you to understand us, and that’s important because you almost
certainly have a relative, friend or coworker who is LGBT. If you can know and
appreciate even a tiny bit of our struggles, you move a step closer to seeing
us just as people. As with me and The
Outsiders, you will no longer look at just the surface, but the person
underneath. You won’t simply see the things that make us different, but the
things that we share in common.

And that, in my opinion, is well worth the time it takes to
read an LGBT-themed book.

Try an Excerpt!

“If I was just going to ask some dude out, like, just out of
the blue—which I totally am not—it wouldn’t be Jimmy.”

“Ah ha!” he crowed. “So, who’s the lucky dude who has your
eye?”

I wasn’t sure he could be trusted with my crush, but I
supposed I had to stop thinking that way about everything. “This guy in my
science class, Zach.”

“Zach Snyder?”

“Ew, gross.” Snyder was a mouth-breathing Neanderthal who
was always picking his nose in class—when he wasn’t scratching his crotch. “I
have better taste than that, come
on!”

“Then which Zach is it? I can name like five—no, six—guys
with that name.”

“Beal.”

Liam’s eyes lit up. “A senior! Wow, you really do go all out
with a crush.”

My cheeks were burning. “He’s just this really fantastic
guy—like, a really nice person, you know?”

“And the fact that he’s smoking hot doesn’t have anything to
do with it?”

I fidgeted. “You think he’s hot too?”

“Dude, the guy is so good looking even straight guys want to
do him.”

I snorted laughter. “You’re awful.”

“So ask him out.”

“Okay, no. I prefer admiring from afar—really far.”

Liam elbowed me. “Homecoming isn’t far off. You should ask
him.”

He said it in this sing-song voice that didn’t make the idea
sound any smarter. “For one, he’s a senior and I’m a freshman,” I said, ticking
the irrefutable points off on my fingers. “For two, he’s so far out of my
league that I don’t have the slightest chance. For three, if I tried, I’d have
some kind of seizure and die. And fourth, oh yeah, he’s straight.”

Liam grinned at me. “One, two and especially three are lame.
I’m throwing them out. So, let’s talk about four. How do you know he’s
straight?”

Meet Chris!

I’ve been writing since I was fifteen, not that those
stories will ever be allowed out of the dark hole I buried them in. I focused
primarily on the Fantasy genre for the first two decades, occasionally
diverting into modern fiction. In 2010, I embarked in a self-publishing career,
focusing on the young adult novel genre. When I’m not writing, I am
contributing to TheBacklot.com, a gay entertainment website.

I must confess that I have downloaded a number of m/m stories but have read only a couple of them. I prefer m/f but I try to challenge myself and read outside of my comfort zone. A YA LGBT would really be a stretch for me. I'm also a librarian and have tried to consciously choose some LGBT for our YA collection. It's important for our students to find all kinds of diversity in their library.catherinelee100 at gmail dot com